GRAND PRAIRIE, TX (February 27, 2024) -- Lone Star Communications, Inc. (LSC) announced the creation of Alairo Solutions, Inc. (ASI), a Clinical Communication and analytics technology provider. Alairo is comprised of AI-powered solutions that combine cutting-edge healthcare technologies and professional services from within LSC and from several partner companies outside of LSC.
Alairo products and solutions will be sold into the healthcare market nationwide through integrators, like Lone Star Communications, who represent a variety of manufacturing distributors, including Rauland.
This move further clarifies the expansion of LSC's strategic focus to deliver top-notch solutions to Healthcare, which address many of their biggest challenges, such as Patient Safety, Effective Staff Communication, Alarm Management and Analytics, and Clinical Automation.
"Lone Star takes great pride in providing excellent world-class solutions and stellar service to our customers. We are splitting the ASI team off to ensure the Lone Star team continues to focus on our core customers while the Alairo team explores future technologies to bring new, innovative products and solutions to the healthcare market," says Raymond Bailey, Lone Star Communications Founder and President. "This move will help the core LSC business focus on key regional integration customers while freeing up the ASI group to expand their focus beyond the regional business opportunities, creating new, cutting-edge technology products designed specifically for healthcare providers around the world."
Effective immediately, Alairo Solutions, Inc. will be an independent company, separate from Lone Star Communications Companies.
The future holds tremendous potential for sophisticated healthcare decision support, clinical reporting capacity, and improved support for healthcare professionals through improved biomedical device integration, ease of use, and intuitiveness provided through hardware and software platforms.
Hospitals and health systems have made large investments of money and resources into improving their clinical processes with technology.
While the technologies implemented may address specific healthcare opportunities, the solutions cannot exist in isolation from each other. The vision for data interoperability is gaining momentum, but many clinical workflows, clinicians, and providers are still struggling to make decisions for their patients based on disparate sets of data.
"Alairo was designed to transform the healthcare technology gaps that are found in most clinical settings," says Dr. Donna Montgomery, Chief Clinical Informatics Officer with LSC. "Alairo is augmentative to those investments and solidifies the gaps between the technology and the clinical processes. The Professional Service implementation team will support the process changes and evidence-based practice the clinicians implement with their patients using Alairo."
In the 2022 book titled Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge (5th edition), authors McGonigle & Mastrian describe the future (of Healthcare) as holding tremendous potential for sophisticated decision support, clinical reporting capacity, and improved support for healthcare professions through improved biomedical device integration, ease of use, and intuitiveness provided through hardware and software platforms.1
As the healthcare market continues to evolve and grow faster and faster, there is an undeniable need to utilize information technologies.
Eric Thorsen, an LSC partner and the CEO and Founder of ThorTech Solutions, says, "Innovative products are transforming every vertical market, including the HC space, making hospitals more efficient. Studies are showing a correlation between increased Health Information Technology (HIT) investments by reducing inpatient mortality and increasing HCAHPS scores."
This is all supported in the research article by Joseph D. Restuccia, Alan B. Cohen, Jedediah N. Horwit, et al, titled Hospital implementation of health information technology and quality of care: are they related? which states, "Risk-adjusted inpatient mortality was higher for hospitals with low HIT implementation compared to those with medium or high HIT implementation, with the O/E ratio for the former being 1.29, compared to 1.06 and 1.07 for the later two, respectively. The HCAHPS-based measure of patient satisfaction showed a similar finding, with low HIT implementation hospitals having a 60.5% average satisfaction score and medium and high HIT implementation hospitals having average scores of 66.0% and 67.9%, respectively."2
Healthcare is clearly at a crossroads today. Statistics show the U.S. has an aging population and a shrinking caregiver workforce.
"Technology is playing a larger and larger role in the solutions. And Alairo is a great solution to address many of these big challenges," states Tim O'Malley, Member of the Executive Council for the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice3 at Brigham and Woman's Hospital in Boston, MA, and Managing Director Cloverhill Management Group, a Medical Technology Consulting organization.
Cloverhill has been consulting TPC Systems, which is a full-service convergence technology solutions provider serving CT, NY, and the greater Northeast since 1935. From information collection and analysis to action, technological solutions for healthcare providers are now essential. Patient safety continues to be a leading goal within Healthcare.
Tim continues, "However, significant headwinds are present. For example, according to the CDC, Patient Fall Rates have risen by over 25% since 20214. As we look to the future, these trends are going to continue undoubtedly due to an aging population along with reported staff shortages."
Jeff Richard is leaving his previous CTO role at LSC to step into the role of President of Alairo Solutions, Inc.
"I am excited to see how Jeff will use his proven leadership skills to take Alairo to the next level, focusing on continuing to enhance the safety and experience of patients in healthcare," says Raymond Bailey. Jeff is a strategically focused, outcomes-driven professional with 25+ years of clinical, technology, and operational leadership experience in Healthcare, both corporate and hospital-based single/multi-site systems.
"This is an exciting time for the ASI group as we continue to design and build innovative solutions that hospitals are looking to adopt in order to ensure caregivers' success, patients' positive experiences, and hospitals overall performance," states Jeff Richard, newly appointed President of Alairo Solutions, Inc.
"My background in the healthcare space provides perspective into inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement that still exist in the clinical practice environment. The ASI group looks forward to working collaboratively with organizations in the integrator space to enhance the value proposition many have established with customers as partners and trusted advisors," concludes Jeff.
Jeff has been with LSC for nearly three years as the Chief Technology Officer, developing strategic business plans; evaluating and monitoring technology market trends, opportunities, and threats; overseeing the IT team to ensure alignment and allocation of resources; and developing the Professional Services team to include domains across clinical/business analytics, information technologies, and research and development.
He spent seven years running a fire and safety business, followed by 12 years in various roles within Baylor healthcare systems before coming to LSC.
1 McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K., G. (2022) Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning at https://www.jblearning.com/catalog/productdetails/9781284220469.
2 Restuccia, J.D., Cohen, A.B., Horwitt, J.N. et al. (2012) Hospital Implementation of Health Information Technology and Quality of Care: Are They Related? at https://rdcu.be/dzad3. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak 12, 109 (2012).
3 Executive Council for the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at http://www.patientsafetyresearch.org/.
4 CDC Patient Fall Rates, Unintentional Older Adult Falls, statistics at https://www.cdc.gov/falls/data/.
